Detective Mike Croft Series Box Set

by Jane Adams

  ‘You take a good picture,’ Jake remarked to the child as an image of Essie dressed in her school clothes filled the screen. He listened with the most rapt attention as they talked of witness statements and repeated the appeal made earlier by Essie’s grandmother and Maria. They finished the account with an excerpt from the video of Julia, with Jake’s voice enhanced and the sound cleaned up, giving instruction about how to move, how to pose, what to do to turn the punters on, and finishing with Jake’s laughter as the girl told him some silly joke that even the enhanced tape couldn’t catch.

  Alastair heard the laughter and felt despair. ‘Let the child go. She’s no earthly use to you.’

  Jake frowned. ‘No imagination if you think that,’ he said.

  ‘The child will die, Jake. Let her go, or finish this whole thing now.’

  Jake looked at his father in mild surprise. ‘You’d like me to kill you both now?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t think you were so ready for it, Alastair.’

  The programme had reached the description of Alastair’s abduction the night before. Jake laughed when he heard about the officer killed in the ‘vicious attack’, his laughter louder and less restrained at the mention of the bravery of the other officer, who, despite his wounds, had managed to call for help.

  ‘We came very close to Jake Bowen last night,’ Peterson was saying, ‘and we know he’s getting overconfident, that he will get careless. We would appeal to him to give himself up. We accept that he probably needs help as much as he deserves blame, and he has nothing to fear in coming forward. Someone somewhere knows who Jake Bowen is and where he is. They must know that they’re protecting a killer or at least suspect that something is amiss. Someone has suspicions — has doubts about a loved one or worries that a neighbour might not be all he seems.’

  Jake was shouting quite uproariously now. ‘Do you have doubts about a loved one, Father, or suspect I might be something not quite pleasant? Oh, come on, Alastair, you must see the joke.’

  Alastair just stared at him. ‘Why do this, Jake? Why cause all this suffering?’

  Jake shook his head, bringing his laughter slowly under control.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said. ‘You really don’t.’ He gestured with his beer in Essie’s direction. ‘You see it never was a question of why, Alastair. It was just a question of, well, why not?’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  3 July

  Wednesday morning at five o’clock Mike arrived back at Honiton. They had been manning the phones for most of the night, taking calls, finally closing the lines at three in the morning.

  Driving back on empty roads, watching the sun come up, Mike was filled with a sense of unreality. The TV studio and Jake Bowen seemed to belong to another world. He wanted nothing more than to grab a few hours’ sleep and forget everything for a while.

  He was surprised to see Maria’s car parked outside the pub where he was staying. He’d tried several times the day before to speak to her again, only getting the answerphone. When she hadn’t appeared that afternoon or early evening, he had assumed that she had changed her mind and was just giving them both time to cool down.

  Maria was asleep in the front of the car, the seat reclining as far as it would go and an old travel rug thrown over her legs. He tapped gently on the window. She woke and smiled, then opened the door and slipped into his arms.

  Mike forgot he was supposed to be angry. ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said. ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘Late last night. Well, early this morning really. The hotel was all shut up so I slept here.’

  Mike had a pass key for the front door. He let them both in and took Maria up to his room.

  ‘It’s not a massive bed,’ he told her.

  She smiled. ‘I’m sure we can manage. Anyway, I think we’re both so tired we could sleep anywhere just now.’

  ‘Sleep?’ he questioned. ‘I haven’t seen you in so long.’

  ‘If you’re serious about that in half an hour, let me know. That’s if you’re still awake.’

  He sat on the side of the bed and watched her undress, too tired even to remove his shoes. He finally shed his clothes and lay beside her, too much aware that he needed a shower and that he couldn’t remember the last time he had shaved. Her body felt so wonderful curved against his own and the rhythm of her breathing so soothing as she drifted into sleep. Half an hour later, Mike was not awake to tell her anything at all.

  * * *

  Jake had locked both Alastair and Essie in one of the smaller rooms so that when he brought their breakfast down he could carry the tray without having to trouble with the gun.

  He went to the top of the basement stairs to retrieve it before letting Alastair back into the outer room, locking the main door and slipping the key into his pocket.

  Urging Alastair into the outer room at gunpoint, Jake returned to the smaller room to check on Essie, aware that his father still hovered near the door, watching him.

  As Jake bent over the child, Alastair made his move. He had in his hands one of the leather straps taken from the bondage room and leapt at Jake as he knelt beside Essie’s makeshift bed, the strap between his hands as though he planned to strangle Jake from behind.

  Jake was ready for him, rising to his feet and striking backwards with the stock of the gun, hitting Alastair hard enough on the temple to send him, dazed and reeling, across the room.

  ‘Just what did you plan to do?’ he asked him. ‘Strangle me? Do you even know how, Daddy dearest? And were you planning on taking the child with you? Or did you just think about your own skin? You’ll have to try a damned sight harder than that, Alastair. A bloody sight harder.’

  He left his father lying there and returned upstairs to watch them from his viewing room. Jake felt pleasantly surprised at his father’s actions. He hadn’t really thought the old man had it in him to try and fight.

  * * *

  Max Harriman had already heard the news about Alastair’s kidnapping when Mike arrived to see him. Max was excited, unable to sit still. The one thing on his mind was how much they’d need him now the competition had been removed.

  ‘He’ll kill him, you know,’ Max told Mike gleefully. ‘Jake hates his father. Really, really loathes that man.’

  ‘Why?’ Mike asked him. ‘What did Alastair do to make Jake hate him so much, and why wait all this time? He could have got rid of Alastair long ago.’

  Max stopped his pacing and stood still, shaking his head. ‘I told you, Jake hates his father. The way Alastair treated him all his life. He robbed him of his childhood, you know. Beat him, denied him all trace of affection. He was never a father to him. Never.’

  ‘No, I don’t buy that, Max. When I brought Alastair here you were talking about what must have been good times. When Alastair took you to the fair, those times you all shared together.’

  He leaned forward across the table. ‘I need you, Max,’ he said, sensing that flattery was going to get him further just now than any other means. ‘Explain it to me, what went on between the pair of them that grew so much hate?’

  Max hesitated for a moment, then sat down facing Mike.

  ‘It isn’t easy to explain,’ he said. ‘I mean, both parts of it were true. They were locked into this . . . this circle, like they were playing games with one another. One minute Alastair would be all over Jake, spoiling him, buying him new toys, taking him out. Then you’d look round and he’d have got mad with Jake about something and he’d be beating seven shades out of his backside. Or throwing all the stuff he’d bought him on the bonfire. Jake said to me once he had to learn fast not to cry out when his dad hit him. I could never understand that, because if he didn’t yell, Alastair would hit him even harder. If it’d been me, I’d have yelled the place down and begged for mercy on the first hit.’

  ‘But Jake saw it as a challenge?’

  ‘Must have done. He saw it as a kind of test, I suppose. Like, how much stronger than his dad could he be? It was like I said,
they were locked into this kind of game. Jake never played with any of the stuff his dad bought. He said he never knew how long he’d have it, so what was the point? What his mam bought, though, that was different. One Christmas, we both had an Action Man. We used to take them up to the old allotments at the back of the school and have mock battles and stuff.’

  ‘And Jake’s mother bought that for him?’

  Max nodded.

  ‘And did Alastair never try to destroy those toys, the ones his mother had bought for him?’

  Max laughed. ‘You’ve got to be joking, Inspector Croft. The woman had forearms the size of hams and a left hook like you’d see from Mike Tyson. Alastair wouldn’t dare to cross that woman.’

  This was a new element. Was it true? Mike asked himself. ‘And yet,’ he said, ‘she stood by and let her husband beat Jake? Beat him so badly that at one time it almost got to court?’

  ‘Oh, you heard about that, did you? That was a laugh and a half.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Max sighed patiently. ‘Jake thought it was a big joke,’ he said. ‘He was, what, thirteen, fourteen, and already he could have the average female doing back-flips. That woman, she would have done anything for Jake. It was such a joke, when he said he’d been stringing her along all the time. There was a right stink. He’d had the police involved and all sorts. Alastair ranting and demanding an apology, and this woman, her career was fucked up before she’d even begun.’

  ‘But it was the truth, wasn’t it, Max? Alastair was guilty of cruelty.’

  Max shrugged. ‘That’s not the point, Inspector he would never have seen his dad go down for it.’

  ‘Why not?’ Mike pressed him. ‘What linked those two? They hated each other and yet Alastair constantly protected his son and Jake seems to have done the same. And I don’t understand what Jake’s mother did about it all. She allowed this to go on and yet I get the impression that Jake loved her and that Alastair did too. And you say that they were afraid of her?’

  Max Harriman was silent for a while, as though thinking it over. ‘They were scared of her,’ he said at last. ‘Alastair knew what Jake was, what he did. But she wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘But she backed the idea that Jake get counselling.’

  ‘Why not? She blamed Alastair, she blamed the school, she blamed everyone bar Jake when she thought he was going off the rails, playing truant and that. I don’t know what it was, Inspector Croft. Maybe, well, she’d lost two or three babies before Jake came along. It must have been hard to accept that your kid was a problem child.’

  Max grinned. ‘There wasn’t a thing that frightened Jake. Nothing he couldn’t or wouldn’t do, even from being a kid. He always said that the biggest kick you could get out of life was doing all the things that people were afraid of doing and watching their faces while you did them. That was power to Jake. He used to say that you had to teach yourself not to be afraid. That anyone could do it, it just meant challenging yourself a little bit more each time until one day you realized you weren’t scared of anything any more. You could do whatever you wanted. He said people were always asking themselves “Why?” whenever stuff went wrong. Jake always said they should be asking themselves why not.’

  ‘But you said that he was afraid of his mother.’

  Max nodded. ‘But not later on. I think he respected her, kind of. She was tough, you see, as tough as Jake. She kept that family going by working all hours, more than Alastair ever did. He was in work, then out of it again. He was a lay preacher at the local church and that was what really mattered in his life.’

  ‘But he left that, suddenly, and went to live in York.’

  Max shrugged. ‘Caught with his hand in the collection plate, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Alastair?’

  ‘Yes, Alastair. Oh, it wasn’t the first time, but this time he couldn’t cover it up. He had a drink problem, and every now and then he fell off the wagon. This was one time.’

  Mike absorbed that slowly. ‘And was that why he beat Jake, when he was drunk?’

  ‘No, no. You take things so literally. Look, the only one Alastair hurt when he was blitzed was himself. He’d fall over things, run into things, whatever. Someone would find him in the street and take him home. Anyone got knocked about then, it was Alastair. She’d lay into him with whatever came handy.’ Max laughed, the memory obviously amusing him.

  Mike tried to take all of this on board. ‘I still don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why did Jake’s mother allow the physical abuse to go on?’

  ‘She didn’t know about a lot of it,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Anyway, she wasn’t one to spare the rod and spoil the child herself. When Jake cheeked her she’d backhand him and not think twice.’

  ‘But is that the same thing? What we’re talking about with Alastair is a systematic pattern of abuse.’

  Max sighed and stared down at his hands, laying them flat upon the table. ‘Alastair thought he was doing right,’ he said. ‘Thought Jake had the devil in him, and maybe he was right. Jake could outfox the devil, if you ask me. And his mam, well, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t know the half of it. Maybe she thought it was up to his dad to punish him. And she always knew how sorry he’d be afterwards. Alastair would always be so terribly sorry. He’d go out and work all the overtime he could, bring in more money than usual, spend time doing stuff around the house. I don’t know, maybe it was just the way things were.’

  Mike looked thoughtfully at Max, uncertain of how much he really understood about Jake’s family and how much truth there was in what Max said. So much seemed contradictory. He wondered how much further he could push things that day.

  ‘Did Jake kill your mother?’ he asked.

  Max blinked in surprise. ‘He didn’t need to,’ he said cryptically, ‘she was already dead. All Jake did was stop the breathing.’

  * * *

  Maria should probably not have been in the incident room, Peterson thought, but she was a difficult lady to keep out of anything, and anyway he had no inclination to try.

  ‘We’ve got a team of forensic psychologists and behavioural experts working on this, but if you ask me they can’t agree on a damn thing.’

  Maria grinned. ‘That’s the problem with shrinks,’ she said. ‘Have you heard the light-bulb joke?’

  Peterson shook his head.

  ‘How many shrinks does it take to change a light bulb?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘One to change the light bulb, at least two to counsel the light bulb on the experience of coming out and half a dozen students to write up the research papers.’

  Peterson laughed. ‘You missed out the pop psychologist to write the coffee-table book,’ he said, ‘and a couple of tabloids to plaster it all over the front page.’

  ‘And someone to propose the conspiracy theory,’ Maria added. ‘You said I could see those pictures?’ Peterson had the file in his hand. He laid on the table the photographs that had been sent to his daughter.

  ‘She’s still in shock,’ he said. ‘Won’t let the kids out of her sight, though I can’t say I blame her. I don’t mind admitting, Maria, this has about finished me with the force. I got shifted into this, so they said, because of my experience. Head the investigations, they said, and I’ve got to admit that at first it was good to be hands-on again. Superintendents are desk jockeys these days. Glorified bloody administrators, hassling the troops into getting an optimum clear-up rate or whatever the current jargon is. But I have to tell you, I’d as soon be back behind my desk again. I sometimes wonder if I’m losing it.’

  Maria shook her head. ‘You know you’re not,’ she said. ‘You’re just under incredible stress . . . we all are.’

  Maria looked more closely at the images Peterson had spread upon the table, the young children playing in the garden, with the mocking injuries marked upon their bodies. She fought hard to hold on to her professional calm.

  ‘He’s subtle,’ she said quietly. ‘And he knows
exactly how much all this is going to hurt.’

  The phone on Peterson’s desk began to ring. He picked up the receiver, listened for several minutes, then scribbled something on the notepad on his desk.

  ‘That was Mike,’ he said, looking excited, animated. ‘Max came through with something, a London address. He claims that Jake rented a flat and uses it as a letter drop.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was a beautiful evening after a perfect summer day. Jake stood on the clifftop looking out to sea, watching a lone cormorant skimming the waves, its prehistoric shape black against the grey-blue waters.

  Alastair stood a few feet away, his hands unbound, the short-barrelled shotgun Jake held cradled across his body enough to keep him from running.

  ‘I love this place,’ Jake told him. ‘It took me nearly two years to find it and another two to restore, but it’s been worth every penny.’

  Alastair turned his head slightly to regard his son. ‘It’s pleasant enough,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t like to be this close to the cliff edge. Another year or two and this whole thing could be washed away.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Jake said. ‘This place will see us both dead and gone.’

  Alastair said nothing but followed Jake’s gaze, looking far out to the horizon. It seemed such a barren, lonely vista. Would anyone hear him if he called out? Or was everything as empty as this damned view of open ocean?

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Talk to you, for a while anyway. There are things I want to know, Alastair. This seems like it could be a good time.’

  ‘As good as any,’ Alastair said slowly. ‘What is it I can tell you?’

  Jake glanced at him. ‘Did you ever love me?’ he asked.

  ‘Love you? Of course I did, you were my son.’

  ‘Is that an answer? I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s the only one I can give. I did my best for you, Jake. Gave you all I could.’